New Poll Shows Trump Facing Historic Gap Among Young Voters

Steve Helber/AP

By Danielle Keeton-Olsen

August 15, 2016 12:22 pm

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falls a distant 36 points behind Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, edging near an unprecedented unpopularity among young voters, according to a new USA Today/Rock the Vote poll of individuals age 18-34.

The recent poll puts Trump even further behind President Barack Obama’s Republican opponents in the 2008 and 2012 elections among millennial voters. The 36-percent gap exceeds Obama’s wide leads in the 18- to 29-year-old population, beating John McCain by 34 percent in 2008 and leading Mitt Romney by 23 percent in 2012, according to exit poll results collected by the Roper Center at Cornell University.

With former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders out of the race, 72 percent of his supporters plan to switch their vote to Clinton, despite Trump’s attempts to lure the Vermont senator’s supporters. Trump successfully wooed 11 percent of Sanders’ supporters, and another 11 percent say they will not vote in the election.

Clinton’s lead over Trump shrinks slightly when third party candidates are added to presidential poll, 50-18, with 11 percent supporting Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and another 4 percent supporting the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

A majority of millennial voters say their presidential choice comes down to opposition to the other major-party candidate, with 54 percent of Trump supporters trying to keep Clinton out of the White House and 51 percent of Clinton’s voters attempting to keep Trump away from the executive branch.